10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

From the Washington Naval Treaty to the end of the Second World War.
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RF
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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I believe they were attached to No. 4 Commando.
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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The first Americans to see active combat in the European theatre of World War II were forty-four enlisted men and five officers from the 1st Ranger Battalion. Dispersed among the Canadians and the British commandos, these men were the first American ground soldiers to see action against the Germans in the disastrous Dieppe Raid. Three Rangers were killed and several captured. The first American soldier killed in Europe in World War II was part of the Dieppe Raid, Ranger Lieutenant E. V. Loustalot. During the mission, he took command after the British Captain leading the assault was killed. Loustalot scaled a steep cliff with his men, was wounded three times, but was eventually cut down by enemy crossfire in his attempts to reach the machine gun nest at the top of the cliff.

According to wiki so it must be true :lol:
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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RF-I think your answers to me were cursory in the extreme-first Dieppe quote" I think this analylsis is rather shallow"-why so pray??? Secondly Churchill's Far Sightedness-which I disagreed with and quoted examples where I considered he was not-Quote you "I disagree with your conclusions-your examples are highly selective" (I would expect them to be so) but no real answer-why so pray???? It it because I am not a Chuchillophile?? Churchill as a Great General-I just do not buy that; because he was just too impulsive and given whim.Finally -how am I expected to learn where my arguments go awry-or am I expected to say nothing and go away empty handed???

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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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Gentlemen,
I think several things changed the course of the war at sea, gunpowder & cannon, steam power, design of ships from wood to iron and steel, radio communications, radar, asdic, aircraft, submarines, the list is almost endless. However, if we are talking about WW2 then Enigma and Ultra, radar, asdic and aircraft carriers must be somewhere up front.
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RF
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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aurora wrote:RF-I think your answers to me were cursory in the extreme-first Dieppe quote" I think this analylsis is rather shallow"-why so pray???
aurora
I didn't go into specific detail as to do so could generate a post so long that it would almost be a novel and crowd out other peoples contributions and effectively run the risk of hijacking the whole thread.

Churchill was better than most politicians as a strategist and general, and certainly better than Hitler. Churchill after all saw the threat of Nazi Germany clearly in strategic terms before WW2 started, as evidenced in his speeches to the House of Commons. Once in the war, he determined what turned out to be the winning strategy in the defeat of Nazi Germany, aided by Hitlers' blunders. And of course he also recognised what the implications of Soviet Russia being one of the victors would be - the Cold War - long before other western Allied leaders did.

As for Dieppe - it helped make D-Day the success it turned out to be.

Gallipoli - a brilliant idea but screwed up by the failure of the leaders of the operation to carry it out in the way it should have been.
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aurora
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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RF -thank you for your reply-it would seem we have to agree to disagree.

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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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RF-I would like to leave the subject of Churchill in WW2 to that eminent author, Sir Max Hastings, who states in the last two paragraphs of his tome "FINEST YEARS" and I quote:-
"History must take Churchill as a whole,as his wartime countrymen were obliged to do, rather than employ a spokeshave to strip away the blemishes created by his lunges into excess and folly.If governance of nations in peace is best conducted by reasonable men,in war there is a powerful argument for leadership by those who are willing to adopt courses beyond the boundaries of reason,as Churchill did in 1940/41.His foremost quality was strength of will.This was fundamental to his triumph in in the early war years, that it seems absurd to suggest that he should have become more biddable,merely because in 1943/45 his stubbornness was deployed in support of misjudged purposes.
He was probably the greatest actor upon the stage of affairs whom the world has ever known.Familiarity with speeches,conversation and the fabulous anecdotage about his wartime doings does nothing to diminish our capacity to be moved to awe,tears,laughter by the sustained magnificence of his performance.He was the largest human being ever to occupy his office.If his leadership through the Second World War was imperfect,it is certain that no other British ruler in history has matched his direction of the nation in peril,nor,please God ,is ever likely to find himself in circumstances to surpass it"

aurora
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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Max Hastings is a newspaper man and war correspondent (the Falklands war) who has colourful opinions.

He can have those opinions because it was Churchill who kept Britain in the war while the likes of Halifax and other appeasessors wanted to come to terms with the enemy.

No human being can be perfect and while Churchill had his faults it is down to him that the second world war panned out the way that it did. Otherwise we could have had a world ruled by Hitler and Hirohito.
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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I must confess RF that your reply astonished me-I thought that Hasting's thumbnail word sketch of Churchill was fair and balanced-not particularly colourful,unless you count eloquence as colourful.I am abashed that you seemingly disapproved of his opinion-for that is all it can be-an opinion.Looking at what you finally said I can see that you are convinced that GB won WW2 via Churchill-which of course-just was not the case.

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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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aurora wrote:I must confess RF that your reply astonished me-I thought that Hasting's thumbnail word sketch of Churchill was fair and balanced-not particularly colourful,unless you count eloquence as colourful.I am abashed that you seemingly disapproved of his opinion-for that is all it can be-an opinion
I didn't disapprove of his opinion, I said that he (Hastings) was a newspaper man with colourful views, being a former newspaper war correspondent, journalist and then newspaper editor. That was said as a compliment and not intended to be derogotary, as most British newspaper editors tend to be sycothantic jobsworths in hoc to their owners editorial line.
His view of Churchill is his own and while I may disagree with some of his conclusions, it doesn't detract too much from the quality of what he wrote.

.Looking at what you finally said I can see that you are convinced that GB won WW2 via Churchill-which of course-just was not the case.
aurora
That isn't my view at all and a distortion of historical fact. What I said was that Churchill identified the correct strategy to defeat Nazi Germany and implemented it, aided by Hitlers' blunders.
As to who won the WW2 I would say that the Russians broke the back of the Heer and Luftwaffe and then from 1943 onwards the Allies collectively won the war on land. The RN aided by RAF Coastal Command the US and Canadian navies won the Battle of the Atlantic
In the Far East, it was the US that defeated Japan, with some help from the other western Allies and the Chinese.
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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I would nominate the Tizard mission as an "extended moment" which brought-about a great change in the war . This was the secret visit by British specialists to bring the US its first "cavity magnetron", without which there would have been no effective Allied radar advancements. The war at sea for both nations was deeply affected by the secret device, which solved the technical problem of generating microwave-length RF energy of sufficient strength to allow development of operable radio detection and ranging systems. The cavity magnetron literally changed warfare at sea (and in the air).
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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The cavity magnetron was invented in Birmingham University and developed by the GEC for centimetric radar in World War II. Its existence was kept secret, and its deployment was delayed, in the belief that as soon as it was used the enemy would be able to adopt the technique both in radar and in countermeasures. The H2
S radar using the cavity magnetron was first used in January 1943, and a Stirling bomber with H2S crashed a few nights later near Rotterdam. The radar equipment was recovered almost intact by Telefunken engineers. The author of a German report on the equipment, Otto Hachenberg, subsequently became a colleague of the present author in radio astronomy.
He died in 2001 and his report of May 1943 was discovered among his papers. It reveals that the principle of the cavity magnetron was already well known in Germany, based on work published in Leningrad in 1936. The most serious effect of the delay in deployment of the magnetron in centimetric radar was in the anti-U-boat campaign, in which the new centimetric radar became the main contributor to the successful end of the Battle of the Atlantic.

REF. Sir Bernard Lovell FRS
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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RNfanDan wrote:I would nominate the Tizard mission as an "extended moment" which brought-about a great change in the war . This was the secret visit by British specialists to bring the US its first "cavity magnetron", without which there would have been no effective Allied radar advancements. The war at sea for both nations was deeply affected by the secret device, which solved the technical problem of generating microwave-length RF energy of sufficient strength to allow development of operable radio detection and ranging systems. The cavity magnetron literally changed warfare at sea (and in the air).
I would have to agree with this.

However there were other developments which also brought about major changes in the direction of the war, equally secret at the time. In particular the breaking of the enigma codes, which affected all aspects of the war, not just at sea.

One of the promoters of developments in both fields was of course Winston Churchill, whose role as PM was in pushing for further efforts in these fields, seeing their strategic value, for whom there was little recognition from his detractors....
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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.

Arguably the magnetron was "just" a development of the Klystron (sp ?) what was important was the "tuning" of the Manchester one and then the development of the "strapped" magnetron. It should be noted that the Japanese were nearer than the Germans to what really were successful magnetrons.

The Tizzard Mission was NOT just the magnetron, it was a whole box of tricks and possibly more importantly the opening of the scientific and operational "books". So nearly all radar developments and operational experience was transferred, de-gaussing, the radio proximity fuze, etc..... As far as the Navy went, the "Bailey Committee" was set up with US representatives in London which set up lists of information to be examined and transferred where requested to the US. US technical and service observers came over and toured research establishments and armed forces. The same applied to the Army and Air Force, but I do not know the names of the relevant committees.

Some things were held back initially, e.g. "the Ultra Secret" and certain weapons, but gradually these were revealed (especially after Pearl Harbour).

.
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Re: 10 moments that changed the course of the war at sea

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aurora wrote:The author of a German report on the equipment, Otto Hachenberg, subsequently became a colleague of the present author in radio astronomy.
He died in 2001 and his report of May 1943 was discovered among his papers. It reveals that the principle of the cavity magnetron was already well known in Germany, based on work published in Leningrad in 1936. The most serious effect of the delay in deployment of the magnetron in centimetric radar was in the anti-U-boat campaign, in which the new centimetric radar became the main contributor to the successful end of the Battle of the Atlantic.

REF. Sir Bernard Lovell FRS
I have to say this makes my paranoia itch. I dont know if there is any irrefutable proof of this but it does beg the question why the Germans didnt have such radars earlier? Reminds me of the Hitler Diaries.
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